Neo-Marxists on Christianity

Terry Eagleton (2007) Jesus Christ: The Gospels.ISBN 978-1-84467-176-2. This is the New Revised Standard Version of the Gospels introduced by Eagleton and edited by radical cleric Giles Fraser. It is pretty cool that Verso is following the Gideons. On this note, I might mention that recently, I bought the Revised English Bible and the New Revised Standard Version. My copies of both of these are with the Apocrypha (though the collection there is different), and the NRSV is the ‘Anglicized’ text; both are published by the Oxford University Press. I thought each of these represented very wide (as wide as allowed in the current climate) ecumenical English-language translation work in either side of the Atlantic.

I should have said that Giles Fraser “selected and annotated” the book, which, from what I can see, is nothing more than selecting and stripping alternative texts in the original NRSV footnotes, and adding some (intelligent, I grant) explanatory annotations in a new set of footnotes. So far as I see, it is a full set of the four Gospels with no abridgement; I would be disappointed to find otherwise. I might add that Eagleton’s introduction looked quite good to me, informed by both modern Judeo-Christian and neo-Marxist understandings and traditions.

Note to self (from Eagletonâ€™s introduction): â€˜[Jesus] is presented as homeless, propertyless, peripatetic, socially marginal, disdainful of kinfolk, without a trade or occupation, a friend of outcasts and pariahs, averse to material possessions, without fear for his own safety, a thorn in the side of the Establishment and a scourge of the rich and powerful. The problem of much modern Christianity has been how to practice this lifestyle with two children, a car and a mortgage.â€™